Hildon

Last updated
Hildon
Original author(s) Nokia
Developer(s) Igalia, Lanedo
Written in C
Operating system
Type Application framework
License GNU LGPL
Website leste.maemo.org
Hildon in Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition Ubuntumobile.jpg
Hildon in Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition

Hildon is an application framework originally developed for mobile devices (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) running the Linux operating system as well as the Symbian operating system. The Symbian variant of Hildon was discontinued with the cancellation of Series 90. It was developed by Nokia for the Maemo operating system. It focuses on providing a finger-friendly interface. [1] It is primarily a set of GTK extensions that provide mobile-device–oriented functionality, but also provides a desktop environment that includes a task navigator for opening and switching between programs, a control panel for user settings, and status bar, task bar and home applets. [2] It is standard on the Maemo platform used by the Nokia Internet Tablets and the Nokia N900 smartphone. [3]

Contents

Hildon has also been selected as the framework for Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition. [4]

Hildon was an early instance of a software platform for generic computing in a tablet device intended for internet consumption. [5] But Nokia didn't commit to it as their only platform for their future mobile devices and the project competed against other in-house platforms. The strategic advantage of a modern platform was not exploited, being displaced by the Series 60, [6] though its development is continued by the Maemo Leste project. [7]

Hildon running in postmarketOS Asus flo hildon.jpg
Hildon running in postmarketOS

Components

The Hildon framework includes components that effectively provide a desktop environment.

Hildon Application Manager

Hildon Application Manager is the Hildon graphical package manager, it uses the Debian package management tools APT (Advanced Packaging Tool and dpkg) and provides a graphical interface for installing, updating and removing packages. It is a limited package manager, designed specifically for end-users, in that it doesn't directly offer the user access to system files and libraries. [8] With the Diablo release of Maemo, Hildon Application Manager now supports "Seamless Software Update" (SSU), which implements a variety of features to allow system upgrades to be easily performed through it.

Hildon Control Panel

Hildon Control Panel is the user settings interface for Hildon. It provides simple access to control panels used to change system settings.

Hildon Desktop

Hildon Desktop is the primary UI component of Hildon, so makes up the bulk of what a user will see as "Hildon". It controls application launching and switching, general system control, and provides interfaces for task bar (application menu and task switcher), status bar (brightness and volume control), and home (internet radio and web search) applets. [9]

Hildon Library

The Hildon library, originally developed by Nokia but since Maemo 5, developed by Igalia and Lanedo (who developed MaemoGTK+, the Maemo version of GTK+). It is a set of mobile specific GTK+ widgets for applications in Maemo. Up to Maemo 4, these widgets were designed for stylus usage. However, in Maemo 5, most widgets were deprecated and new widgets for direct finger manipulation were introduced, including a kinetic panning container.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qt (software)</span> Object-oriented framework for software development

Qt is cross-platform software for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed.

In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S60 (software platform)</span> Smartphone software platform

The S60 Platform was a software platform for smartphones that runs on top of the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia based on the 'Pearl' user interface from Symbian Ltd. It was introduced at COMDEX in November 2001 and first shipped with the Nokia 7650 smartphone. The platform has since seen 5 updated editions. Series 60 was renamed to S60 in November 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME Terminal</span> Terminal emulator from GNOME

GNOME Terminal is a terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop environment written by Havoc Pennington and others. Terminal emulators allow users to access a UNIX shell while remaining on their graphical desktop.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maemo</span> Mobile operating system by Nokia

Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to compete with Apple and Android, and that strategy failed for complex, institutional and strategic reasons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Series 90 (software platform)</span>

The Series 90 is a platform for mobile phones that use Symbian OS. It was developed by Nokia in collaboration with Psion. It was released in 2003 and was going to be the platform for the Nokia 7700 which was cancelled, but did eventually make it to market with the Nokia 7710.

The Access Linux Platform (ALP) is a discontinued open-source software based operating system, once referred to as a "next-generation version of the Palm OS," for mobile devices developed and marketed by Access Co., of Tokyo, Japan. The platform included execution environments for Java, classic Palm OS, and GTK+-based native Linux applications. ALP was demonstrated in devices at a variety of conferences, including 3GSM, LinuxWorld, GUADEC, and Open Source in Mobile.

In computer science, the semantic desktop is a collective term for ideas related to changing a computer's user interface and data handling capabilities so that data are more easily shared between different applications or tasks and so that data that once could not be automatically processed by a computer could be. It also encompasses some ideas about being able to share information automatically between different people. This concept is very much related to the Semantic Web, but is distinct insofar as its main concern is the personal use of information.

A mobile operating system is an operating system for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical/mobile laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on them are generally not considered mobile ones, as they were originally designed for desktop computers that historically did not have or need specific mobile features. This line distinguishing mobile and other forms has become blurred in recent years, due to the fact that newer devices have become smaller and more mobile unlike hardware of the past. Key notabilities blurring this line are the introduction of tablet computers and light-weight laptops and the hybridization of the two in 2-in-1 PCs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MicroB</span>

MicroB was a mobile web browser developed by Nokia for use in smartphones and mobile devices that run the Maemo operating system. The browser is Mozilla-based and uses the Gecko layout engine.

Nokia Internet Tablets is the name given to a range of Nokia mobile Internet appliances products. These tablets fall in the range between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and an Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC), and slightly below Intel's Mobile Internet device (MID).

A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or component made for one or more different software platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qt Creator</span> QT development environment

Qt Creator is a cross-platform C++, JavaScript, Python and QML integrated development environment (IDE) which simplifies GUI application development. It is part of the SDK for the Qt GUI application development framework and uses the Qt API, which encapsulates host OS GUI function calls. It includes a visual debugger and an integrated WYSIWYG GUI layout and forms designer. The editor has features such as syntax highlighting and autocompletion. Qt Creator uses the C++ compiler from the GNU Compiler Collection on Linux. On Windows it can use MinGW or MSVC with the default install and can also use Microsoft Console Debugger when compiled from source code. Clang is also supported.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME</span> Desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like systems

GNOME, originally an acronym for GNU Network Object Model Environment, is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nokia N900</span> 2009 smartphone by Nokia

The Nokia N900 is a smartphone made by Nokia. It supersedes the Nokia N810. Its default operating system, Maemo 5, is a Linux-based OS originally developed for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It is the first Nokia device based upon the Texas Instruments OMAP3 microprocessor with the ARM Cortex-A8 core. Unlike the three Nokia Internet tablets preceding it, the Nokia N900 is the first Maemo device to include phone functionality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symbian</span> Discontinued mobile operating system

Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and was released exclusively on ARM processors, although an unreleased x86 port existed. Symbian was used by many major mobile phone brands, like Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and above all by Nokia. It was also prevalent in Japan by brands including Fujitsu, Sharp and Mitsubishi. As a pioneer that established the smartphone industry, it was the most popular smartphone OS on a worldwide average until the end of 2010, at a time when smartphones were in limited use, when it was overtaken by iOS and Android. It was notably less popular in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MeeGo</span> Discontinued Linux distribution

MeeGo is a discontinued Linux distribution hosted by the Linux Foundation, using source code from the operating systems Moblin and Maemo. Primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances in the consumer electronics market, MeeGo was designed to act as an operating system for hardware platforms such as netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, tablet computers, mobile computing and communications devices, in-vehicle infotainment devices, SmartTV / ConnectedTV, IPTV-boxes, smart phones, and other embedded systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nokia N9</span> Smartphone model

The Nokia N9 is a flagship smartphone developed by Nokia, running on the Linux-based MeeGo mobile operating system. Announced in June 2011 and released in September, it was the first and only device from Nokia with MeeGo, partly because of the company's partnership with Microsoft announced that year. It was initially released in three colors: black, cyan and magenta, before a white version was announced at Nokia World 2011.

References

  1. Nokia Pushes Hildon Upstream
  2. Maemo Diablo 4.1 release documentation - 5.2.4 Hildon Framework
  3. maemo Tutorial Bora Archived 2008-04-21 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Hildon Desktop Manual Procedure [ permanent dead link ]
  5. Andrew Orlowski. "Nokia's Great Lost Platform". The Register.
  6. "Nokia's Great Lost Platform - Page 4". The Register .
  7. Thom Holwerda (2021-03-14). "The Nokia N900: the future that wasn't". OSNews . Retrieved 2022-07-17.
  8. Hildon Application Manager - Overview
  9. Ubuntu Documentation Archived 2008-06-06 at the Wayback Machine - Hildon Desktop